Earlier this week, Trout Unlimited released a new film, “Horses and Highwater: Restoring Tincup Creek,” documenting the restoration of the Salt River Watershed and the people who made this incredible project come to life.
Located in northwest Wyoming and southeast Idaho, the Salt is a blue-ribbon fishery for native Snake River cutthroat trout and wild brown trout. However, its health has been compromised by degraded and fragmented fish habitat, rapid development in riparian areas, impaired water quality, and dewatering.
“At its heart, Horses and Highwater is a conservation film, but it’s also about community, character, love for the land, and dogged Western determination to find a way to get things done,” said Tanner Belknap, Salt River Project Manager for Trout Unlimited (TU). “The ongoing restoration efforts at Tincup Creek exemplify the incredible partnership between Trout Unlimited and Caribou-Targhee National Forest – among many other partners like Wyoming Conservation Corps crews, grazing permitees, and volunteers – to bring these projects to life.”
Featured in the film are two Tincup Creek stream restoration projects, both of which aimed to reconnect sections of Tincup Creek to its floodplain. The film focuses on the North Fork Tincup Creek Process-Based Restoration Project, completed in 2024. This project used teams of draft horses and Wyoming Conservation Corps crews to install log structures in the creek to capture cobble and sediment mobilized during runoff and raise the elevation of the streambed to improve floodplain connectivity.
Elevating the stream will reconnect it to its floodplain to improve stream function, reduce erosion, and improve habitat conditions. These efforts will enhance riparian conditions and habitat for Yellowstone cutthroat trout, northern leatherside chub, boreal toad, western pearl shell mussels, and bluehead suckers – all of which are native species with special management emphasis. The film also pays homage to the first major TU and Caribou-Targhee National Forest restoration project on Tincup Creek, completed in 2019, which fully restored 5 miles of Tincup along the dirt road section of the creek.
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